But what did you learn? What was surprising about EMC’s announcements, and what was expected? Doesn’t matter if you attended EMC World or kept up with the latest news on SearchStorage.com – let us know what you thought of this year’s conference in the comments below!

“I was going to post my negative views and my findings on the new product (besides the UI) but after reading some of these posts, I would feel like kicking a man when he is down, I’ll wait for R1, this vesion is full of bugs is not just the UI or the selection list things. change is good… but damn!!!”

At the risk of over-simplfying the complaints, it sounds like the issue is that changes to the UI were meant to make Backup Exec easier for new customers and incorporate new tech, but they have proven to be, uh, a challenge for some existing users so far.

“We’re finding new customers love the interface. There’s a fraction of existing customers saying they want the old stuff, they don’t want to move to the 21st century. They don’t have the time to spend learning the new interface.”

And the company points out in the Backup Exec story and on the comment board that the changes were made with input from customers. And those changes had to be made, because of new features such as support for cloud, dedupe and virtual backups.

Just kidding, we didn’t cheer. But, the move to integrate backup software with the applications it is designed to protect was definitely interesting enough for a quick “hmm, neat idea” over a cup of coffee here at the office.

Our senior news director, Dave Raffo, wrote:

EMC first unveiled DD Boost two years ago as a way to speed backups by offloading part of the data deduplication process to the backup server. DD Boost already supported EMC’s NetWorker and Avamar, as well as Symantec’s NetBackup and Backup Exec backup software. Now EMC is extending that capability to one of the applications that enterprises need to protect. EMC’s goal is to get more database administrators (DBAs) using RMAN to back up to Data Domain appliances.

Dave also tells us that when DD Boost is used in concert with RMAN and Data Domain, the Oracle product can manage Data Domain replication with catalog awareness, plus take advantage of Data Domain’s dedupe and other functionality.

So we’re asking: will this kind of integration make you take another look (or maybe a first) at Data Domain appliances? What do you think of this kind of backup software/application integration in general? Cool idea? Who cares? Tell us in the comments below. I know this blog gets rowdy; keep it civil.

Symantec’s Kevin Haley tells us it’s not just whether they return it, but whether the finder starts digging through personal and business data you have stored on the device, as well.

In a blogpost at Symantec’s website, Haley describes an experiment where the company intentionally scattered 50 phones in several cities to learn whether they’d be returned and if the data on them would be left alone. Haley wrote that the devices could be monitored remotely, and were loaded with faked corporate and personal data.

So what happened when the phones were found?

Most were accessed by their discoverers, who tried to dig in to the simulated personal or corporate info, some of which was rigged to look like salary information or a remote network access app, wrote Haley.

Also, apparently there are still a lot of people out there who believe in the schoolyard chant “finders keepers, losers weepers” even with a device loaded with the name and contact information of the owner, according to Haley.

The post includes a lot of good tips for organizations to follow in case a mobile device is lost — you should definitely check it out.

According to a statement from Coraid, the partnership allows customers of its SAN product to use Veeam for backing up and replicating data at an off-site location for disaster recovery, and operate an entire virtual machine from an image-level backup.

Spectra says for some of its tape libraries – including the T200, T300, T680 and T950 – the LTO-6 standard allows the company to boost capacity from LTO-5’s 3 TB to a compressed 8 TB of storage, plus increase data transfer rates from 280 MB per second to a compressed 525 MB per second.

They will also be equipped with native 8 gigabit Fibre Channel interfaces that are also compatible with 2-, 4- and 8 gigabit FC switches and host bus adapters. The company’s T120 and T150e libraries will offer either 8 gigabit Fibre Channel or 6 gigabit SAS interfaces.

The company said their LTO-6 machines will be compatible with the older LTO-4 and LTO-5 tapes, and will operate with Spectra’s BlueScale library management software.

For home customers, the service stores 150 GB for $4.95 per month or 500 GB for $14.95 per month. The backup service also offers a free option with a 5 GB storage limit.

The service offers support for Windows PCs, Mac OS X, Android and Apple’s iOS, plus the company says it stores up to 30 earlier copies of archived files, and they don’t count against a customer’s total storage limit.

It also offers common features like 256-bit AES encryption, continuous data backup and data restores, and 24-hour customer support.

IDrive says it has about 800,000 subscribers for its storage products.

Deciding that a bunch of random letters and numbers don’t say “backup vendor” to their customers, Seagate Technology LLC’s i365 backup division switched its name back to its old “EVault” moniker last month.

EVault is a strong name. The EVault name conveys many of the benefits important to you. EVault stands for electronic vault. Digital data goes in, and it stays put until you need it back. Secure. Reliable. Simple. Efficient. It’s what people ought to know about our backup and recovery services. Now it’s in our name.

EVault is a strong brand. The EVault name is well known and well liked by data protection professionals, and we want to leverage that more. By retiring the i365 name, we make it simpler for everyone to remember who are and what we do. And we’re free to focus on building a single, world-class brand.

EVault is who we are. Fact is, since 1997, EVault has always been who we are—the backup and recovery experts.

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A blog about data protection issues in today's data storage world. Learn about data backup and recovery, disaster recovery and business continuity planning and strategies, and data backup and disaster recovery for the SMB.